Southern California Edison continues to roll out changes to its pricing models, with some new changes coming up next month for high-use customers. “Low-use customers will have to pay a bit more,” said Russell Garwacki, Edison’s director of pricing design and research. “We want to give less of a penalty to high-use consumers.”
Most southern California residents won’t see significant changes to their bill outside cosmetic ones. The current four-tier pricing system customers are used to seeing will be cut to three; a low-, medium-, and high-use system. Customers in the higher bracket can expect an approximately one-percent drop in their bills, while low- and middle-use consumers will see a bump of about three percent.
The forthcoming changes date back to the energy crisis in 2001, to which California responded with a number of policies aimed at helping residents cope. Low-income customers’ rates were frozen, and the difference ended up being passed on to mostly middle-class families — households that use the most energy on average.